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Senior Member
Duke Energy and the US Navy plan a new solar energy park at Crane Naval Area in the coming months/years.
I have been wishing for this for a long time now. As an Environmental Scientist and Conservation of Natural Resource Major from Purdue University I for a long time wanted to see us start doing more renewable energy projects to lower the amount of coal that we have to burn. Coal is the dirties fuel (Carbon Fuel) and it's very expensive to clean the emissions going to the air when we burn coal. First you have to wash the coal to get the inorganic sulfur out of the coal along with other heavy particles. The heavy particles sink to the bottom of a wash tank when crushed coal is put into a big tank of water. The coal being lighter float and can be skimmed off the top and then dried before being stockpiled or shipped to the coal fired generator plant to be burned. The coal is turned into a power and then blown into the furnace and burned while being suspended in the air. Yet even more cleaning of the flue gases have to be done to clean the emission before they are forced into the atmosphere.
Years ago we built tall smoke stacks and released the emission high up in the air where the winds would carry them far away. Emissions being released in the Midwest have been traced all the way to the USA's East Coast. Sulfur in the emissions creates sulfates that can travel hundreds of mile and destroy trees via acid rain deposition in the Smokey Mountains. I've seen the damaged trees on Mt Laconte in the Smokes.
https://www.google.com/search?q=Smok...ddress&ie=&oe=
So now is the time to start building up the alternative energy resources. Why now? Well we need to start the transition to these new sources of energy sooner rather than later. One reason is that coal is becoming more expensive compared to other carbon based fuels such as natural gas. Actually it's natural gas and it's abundance and clean burning that's forcing the coal companies to head to court to file for financial relief.
http://www.courierpress.com/news/375516501.xhtml
We won't be able to do away with coal any time soon. And the sun does not always shine. But batteries that can save the solar energy that's being generated while the sun shines are being developed and they can save the energy to use when the skies are cloudy. These new batteries are going to revolutionize the way we work and live in the future.
Sand which is composed of silicon dioxide or worn down quartz rock is being used to create better solar panels that are more efficient and generate more electricity than before. New processes that help to purify the SiO2 help make more efficient solar panels. With these new solar panels we can capture more of the sunlight and create more electrons to store in the new more efficient batteries.
Tesla Company is making new electric cars that work on these newer and more efficient batteries. They have one electric car that can go from 0 to 60 mph in under 4 seconds. I think it was actually 3.x something seconds to get to 60 mph. Yes the world is a changing.
https://www.teslamotors.com/
The US Government has been using solar energy in space and also fuel cells as well. Fuel cells are another form of alternative energy. A fuel cell takes Hydrogen gas (H) and adds it to oxygen in the air and creates pure water as the only byproduct plus free electrons. The electrons can charge batteries or run electric motors. Many forward looking countries such as Germany and Sweden are making fuel cell powered submarines that can be a "HOLE IN THE OCEAN" and are so quiet (less moving parts) that they are very hard to find in the ocean. These new submarines can stay submerged for up to two weeks at a time. During WWII German Submarines were a threat to all shipping in the World's Oceans but they could not stay submerged for very long and that was their weakness. We destroyed many of them on the surface using newly developed radar on our planes to find and destroy these submarines at night while they were trying to recharge their batteries while running on their diesel engines. Today's modern fuel cell submarines don't need to surface to recharge their batteries as often and are much more lethal. The world will see how lethal they are if they ever go to war. The USA would be wise to build these new types of submarine too.
And fuel cells can also be used to power our homes and automobiles. Yes they make fuel cell powered automobiles too.
You can fuel up your car with hydrogen that you make at home and then drive all day long to work and back and not pollute the air at all. All you are doing is taking water and converting it to hydrogen and oxygen and then recombining those two gases to make electricity and we use the sunlight to do this job. The sunlight is free too.
I'm not sure how long it's going to take to transform America's power grid but we are finally making a good start with this project and other's like this.
Senior Member
I tried purdue, but didn't ;ast very long, it was after the service, and starting a new job, couldn't cut it. My son is a purdue grad, both my grandsons[after this may] will be purdue grads.I've seen the miles of wind turbines in northern Ind.,but our power grid is still old and needs a massive over haul, to enable more solar energy to be used by small consumers.
Senior Member
I would have been nice to see a link to the story instead a bunch of bloviating about how great solar energy is.
Here you go:
http://news.duke-energy.com/releases...ana-naval-base
Senior Member
The story link I must have left out. And yesterday the newspaper that I got the story from went to a subscription only reading phase. I can still see the main page but if I try to click on any of the news stories I get a page asking for a subscription before I can read the articles. They will now lose about half or more of the people that read their newspaper online. They were allowing a limited number (20) stories to be read before one got that message and got locked out). I used a program to remove the cookies that they put on my computer to see how many times I had read the stories but that's not working any more.Originally Posted by GeoFisher
Sorry George. Thanks for the link. I've not read it yet but will go take a look at it now.
Senior Member
What if the terrorists figure out how to take down the Electrical Grid in the USA? What if the power were to go out for not just a few hours but days or even months. What would you do with the food in your freezer or refrigerator if you didn't have electrical power? What would you do if the lights all went out all across the North American Continent?
I just got a email today showing some thing from Fox News and it was talking about a book written by someone about this very thing. Which got me thinking. Then I came back to fishing.com and read this thread again. Which got me to thinking some more.
What if everyone in the USA had their own solar generator and also a fuel cell in their house? We would not need a power grid as much as now. We could all generate our own power. Fuel cells run off Hydrogen and Oxygen gases and produce pure water and electricity. Solar cells generate electricity which can be used to make hydrogen and oxygen though electrolysis. It's a never ending cycle of power as long as the sun shines. And Terrorists have not nor will they ever figure out a way to block out the sun. So we would be safer if we all had a fuel cell power generator and solar panels in our homes. Now the USA has a way to protect itself form the terrorists taking down our power grids.
Did you know that power plants are operated and controlled with computers these days. So is the power grid. All the terrorists have to do is figure out how to get control of those computer and they can shut things down. It's been tried already and who knows if they were successful or not. If the power did go out do you think our government would admit that they screwed up and allowed the terrorists hacker access to the computers that control the power grid? Probably know. They would probably tell us that a squirrel got caught up in the power lines and blew some transformers or something to that effect until they could get things back up and running.
Japan just had some more powerful earth quakes. The last time this happened it knocked out three or four of the Fukushima Nuclear Facilities and radiation is still leaking out of those plants today. So that disaster along with three mile island and a few others have put a huge damper on the demand for nuclear power plants.
I also read another story about the City or Town of Jasper, IN or maybe it was Huntingburg, IN where the town council voted to tax anyone with a solar power setup on their roofs 50 dollars a month. I saw this on twitter actually. Why would anyone on the city council vote to do such a thing. Think about this for a minute. Who wants to stop solar energy from being more wildly used? Who's in completion with solar energy? Where do we get our electricity from today. And what is being used to produce this power? What's in the earth that we have to dig up and transport to the power plant before it's burned? OK you probably have the answer now. So why would the city council people vote to tax or slow down the growth of solar panels on their citizens roofs? If it's an eye sore then why don't they tax every telephone pole in the city as to me that is more of an eye sore than a solar panel on the roofs. We could get rid of all the power poles in America and be much better off if everyone could produce their own clean power right at their own home or factory. Yes this can be scaled up and used for factories and business as well as homes.
I posted about this a while back when I was talking about fuel cells used to power vehicles. Other countries are using them right now to power the submarines. And if a war were to break out those submarines would be more potent that the German U Boat were in the beginning of WWII. As they can stay under water for up to 3 weeks or more at a time. They don't have to surface to recharge their batteries like the U Boats of WWII had to do.
Anyway it's just something to think about for the future. I doubt it will happen any time soon. But as the cost of solar panels comes down and the cost of burning coal goes up there will be a change in America Someday. Let's home it's a more gradual change instead of something dramatic like a terrorist taking down our nations power grids with a simple computer hack. The thought of this happening is spine chilling. Better get your survival gear on or wear you little Tin Hats.
https://ssl.toyota.com/mirai/?&srchi...ll_General_E||
Senior Member
I'd love to see solar and alternatives being used effectively.........unfortunately, Fossil fuels and coal still are more efficient and effective.
I do believe we will continue to see significant headway in battery technologies, and as those technologies get better, the idea of solar or wind or even fuel cell becomes more reliable, cost effective, and readily available. Will it really happen in my lifetime.....I don't know.
Later,
Geo
Senior Member
Yes that's right it may not happen in my lifetime as I'm old and tired. But the next generation and the one's after them will need to figure this out when we run low on the carbon fuels and they become harder to dig up and process.
I hate to see anyone lose their job but the future means we will have to change our ways eventually in order to survive as a species. We need to adapt or die. And humans have always been great at adapting. That is why there are billions of humans living on this earth today.
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